It is only a fortnight since Raducanu was forced to pull out of a tournament in Texas after contracting tonsilitis, a setback from which was still reeling when the wrist injury that hampered her towards the end of last season returned. Those latest unwelcome additions to the extensive catalogue of injuries and ailments from which the world No 77 has suffered since her victory at Flushing Meadows hardly augured well for her appearance at Indian Wells. Yet, having coughed and spluttered her way past Montenegro’s Danka Kovinic in the opening round, the 20-year-old can now point to palpable evidence of progress.

With her steely win over Linette, the Polish world No 21 who reached the semi-finals of this year’s Australian Open, Raducanu achieved her best victory by ranking since she defeated Maria Sakkari in the last four of the US Open. It was also the first time she has won two matches in a row since she made the last four at the Korea Open almost six months ago. More important than any statistical milestone, however, was the tenacious manner of the win. 

Regularly shaking off her wrist between points, Raducanu was in obvious discomfort as she lost four of the first five games. It did not help that Linette, a player whose consistency, athleticism and defensive skills typically ensure that every point must be earned, was barely putting a foot wrong. Gradually, though, Raducanu began to adapt to the nature of the challenge, abandoning her initial policy of all-out aggression in favour of a more measured approached. As she applied more shape to her shots, driving Linette off the baseline with heavy topspin and biding her time in the rallies, the Pole’s assurance began to wane.

No Raducanu match would be complete without a visit from the trainer, and here it came immediately after Raducanu had broken to lead 6-5. It was an inopportune moment to stop for a medical timeout, and the Briton wisely declined that offer, electing instead to soldier on after taking a painkiller. She was immediately broken to love but, with Linette increasingly struggling to find the court, Raducanu rattled through the tiebreak and did not look back.

“I feel more positive about my game today,” said Raducanu, who showed no sign of the coughing and laboured breathing that affected her in her opening match. 

“The first day [against Kovinic] I didn’t really know what was going on. Today I felt pretty decent out there, especially with the conditions. It was really windy. I did well to overcome it.”

Raducanu declined to elaborate on the nature of her wrist problem, saying only that she was “managing it”. Nor did she show any inclination to bemoan her run of bad luck with injuries and illness.

“Sometimes you wonder, you think, how is this possible?” she mused. “But I think you create your own luck. It works both ways. I won the US Open as well, and I think I also have to take the bad luck sometimes, because good fortune has also come upon me. 

“I wouldn’t trade that title for the world. I’m just prepared to take whatever it takes, knowing that I have that in the bank.”

What Anne Keothavong, Britain’s Billie Jean King Cup captain, would give to know that she has Raducanu in the bank for next month’s qualifying clash against France. Asked after her match against Kovinic whether she would be playing, the British No 1 said she hadn’t thought about but would decide once she knew the dates. That drew a bemused response from Keothavong, who wrote on social media: “My communication skills are generally good in case anyone was wondering.”

Raducanu is scheduled to play at the Stuttgart Open, which starts on 15 April and is backed by Porsche, one of her chief sponsors. Britain face France in Coventry on 14 and 15 April.

While Raducanu advances to a third-round meeting with Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia, the 13th seed, two-time champion Victoria Azarenka is out. Azarenka, seeded 14th, was beaten 7-6 (7-1), 6-3 by Karolina Muchova, whose commitment to attack and superior handling of the gusty conditions proved decisive. 

Azarenka’s exit promises to ease the progress of Ons Jabeur through the second quarter of the draw. Jabeur, the fourth seed, marked her return from knee surgery with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 victory over Poland’s Magdalena Frech.

French, who made it into the main draw as a lucky loser, made the most of an error-strewn start by the Tunisian, taking a set off a top-10 player for the first time. But Jabeur gradually found her range, forcing a break in the ninth game of the second set behind some heavy forehands, serving out to level the contest and then easing through the decider. The 28-year-old, who revealed afterwards that her knee is no more than “80%, getting there”, said she had nothing to lose in the next round against Marketa Vondrousova, who consigned her to an early defeat at the Australian Open a couple of months ago.   

“It’s a tough decision to come back, and I was the one that insisted that I come back in Indian Wells and Miami,” said Jabeur. “It was probably too early to come back, but I just made it a new challenge for myself.

“I did regret it after the first set. But then, you know, I just told myself to accept what’s happening, to fight through it, and to just see how it goes. I’m sure it will get better and better every match.”

Iga Swiatek, the top seed, will be hard pushed to achieve that after opening her title defence with a blistering performance. Swiatek swept past Claire Liu, the American world No 56, 6-1, 60 to book a third-round appointment with Bianca Andreescu, the 32nd seed and former US Open champion.

The post Raducanu overcomes injury to beat Linette in Indian Wells appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

A case in point came with the Belarusian fifth seed serving against Poland’s Magdalena Linette for a place in the Australian Open final. She had already missed three match points in the previous game and, as she snatched impatiently at a backhand and the ball clipped the net tape, falling just short of the scampering Linette’s outstretched racket, Sabalenka’s anxiety was clear. Moments later, she delivered her first double fault of the set.

The serving difficulties the 24-year-old experienced last year are well documented. So too is the remedial work she did with Gavin MacMillan, a biomechanics expert who helped her to remodel her service motion. What is less often talked about is the mental strength that enabled Sabalenka to compete for most of last season without the cornerstone of her game. It says something when a player can hit 428 double faults in a year but still make finals in Stuttgart and Rosmalen, advance to the fourth round of the Australian Open, and end the campaign in surging style by reaching the US Open semi-finals and the title round at the WTA Finals.

Against Linette, Sabalenka showed her steel again, finding four first serves – including a 116mph ace – to seal a 7-6, (7-1), 6-2 victory that sees her advance to a first grand slam final. There, she will face Elena Rybakina, the Wimbledon champion, who claimed a 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 win over former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka. Already, it is being billed as a battle of power against power. 

In some ways it will be exactly that, given the obvious stylistic similarities between the two big-serving, big-hitting women. Yet the slower conditions at this year’s tournament, where there have been complaints about the balls rapidly losing pressure and fluffing up, suggest brute force will not be the only factor. The greater emotional control to which Sabalenka has attributed her recent good form has been mirrored in her shot-making, with the Belarusian frequently favouring placement and spin over pure velocity. No doubt there has also been an element of tailoring her game to the conditions, a necessity Rybakina acknowledged as she looked ahead to the final.   

“Maybe I will not have to serve that big, that fast, so it doesn’t really matter the speed,” said Rybakina, who defeated top seed Iga Swiatek in the last 16. “It’s important to have a good placement on the serve. In these conditions, to serve full, full power, it’s not easy. The ball is not really going.  

“Same on the baseline. Just to play more deeper and do the same thing, try to come forward, just to expect maybe longer rallies than usual.”

It would be wrong to imagine that similar thoughts have not occurred to Sabalenka. Yet it is easy to see her simply as a human wrecking ball. A title winner in Adelaide before the Australian Open, she has now won 10 matches in a row without dropping a set. She has been striking her forehand with such venom that, as the former Australian player Casey Dellacqua informed her after her semi-final victory, her average ball speed (approximately 86mph) is comparable to the leading men. She certainly had too much force for Linette, whose defensive skills and ability to absorb and redirect the power coming at her only lasted until the first-set tiebreak, at which point Sabalenka stepped on the pedal and left the Pole for dust.

Yet the true measure of Sabalenka’s strength is not the weaponry at her disposal, or the speed at which she deploys it, but the mental steel that allows her to approach the game as she does in the first place. The Belarusian has often been criticised for lacking a fallback strategy, a plan B for those days when more is required than simply trying to rip the cover off the ball. Less attention is paid to the courage and self-belief that allows her to smoke every ball from start to finish. Like Caroline Garcia, another specialist in all-out attack, Sabalenka has a game style that requires a deep reservoir of conviction. 

It says something too that Sabalenka, channelling a newfound calmness, has been able to put the loss of her three previous grand slam semi-finals behind her. Only Gabriela Sabatini, Zina Garrison, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati have shown comparable resilience in the open era. Having made her first final, however, Sabalenka is not done yet. She wants more, as her measured reaction to beating Linette indicated.

“There is still one more match to go,” she said. “It’s good that I broke through in the semi-finals, but there is one more match to go. I just want to stay focused.”

With power not the be all and end all, the mental battle will be intriguing. Having finally broken her semi-final duck, will Sabalenka approach the match with a newfound sense of liberation? Or will the experience Rybakina gained at the All England Club last summer, the knowledge of how to navigate a grand slam final, prove decisive? It certainly served the Kazakh well as she fought back from a break down against Azarenka to seal a straight-sets win.

“For me, this time I would say it was a bit easier compared to Wimbledon, when I was playing for the first time quarters, semis, final,” said the 23-year-old, who frequently struggled on serve against Azarenka. “I knew that I have to focus on every point. I think in the end I did really well.”

Rybakina, seeded 22nd, did not earn ranking points for her Wimbledon victory because of the WTA’s decision to strip the tournament of points in response to its ban on Russian and Belarusian players. Come what may on Saturday, she will finally move into the top 10 for the first time next week, a ranking more commensurate with her ability. It should spell an end to her days of being relegated to the backwaters of the outside courts.

As for Sabalenka, she says she will prepare as normal for the biggest match of her career.

“I’m not going to do something extra,” she said. “I think it’s okay to feel a little bit nervous. It’s a big tournament, big final. If you’re going to start trying to do something about that, it’s going to become bigger, you know?”

Sabalenka has done more than most to show she can take a challenge in her stride.

The post Sabalenka to face Rybakina in Australian Open final appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Funny thing, though: Linette feels like she’s done it all before. The big crowds. The show courts. The star opponents. That’s probably because she has.

Linette, a 30-year-old Pole currently ranked 45th in the world but about to climb a lot higher, has faced Serena Williams in the cavernous environs of the US Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium and Angelique Kerber at Wimbledon. From Tianjin to Stanford, she’s played some of the biggest names in the sport’s recent history: Maria Sharapova, Naomi Osaka, Garbiñe Muguruza, Venus Williams, the list goes on. 

The difference now? She’s winning. Sure, Linette has had some big victories before, most notably at Roland Garros, where she felled Ons Jabeur on Court Philippe-Chatrier last summer, a year after accounting for an injured Ashleigh Barty on the same court. But now, for the first time, the successes are coming thick and fast. 

Linette followed up her impressive fourth-round win over Caroline Garcia, the fourth seed and WTA Finals champion, with another outstanding performance, dispatching former world No 1 Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 7-5. In the semi-finals, she will meet Aryna Sabalenka, the fifth seed, who ran out a 6-3, 6-2 winner against Croatia’s Donna Vekic. It is more than Linette ever expected, but familiarity with the big stage has enabled the Pole, filling the void left by her compatriot Iga Swiatek’s absence, to take things in her stride.

“I had so much experience on those big courts before, because almost every grand slam I ended up on a big court one way or another,” said Linette, who has beaten four seeded players in Melbourne. “I played so many big players already. It’s just nothing really new for me. Just another match. 

“Of course, it’s way more far in the draw. But still, it kind of feels the same. Because I played Karolina in the first round already twice at the US Open, so it feels quite normal.”

It is all a far cry from two years ago, when Linette’s knee gave way on the eve of the tournament, forcing her to withdraw. The longstanding problem would eventually require surgery, but from that nadir came fresh perspective and a newfound composure.  

“It was honestly the most painful experience of my life,” said Linette. “Nobody could diagnose me for almost 11 weeks, so I was out for a total of five months. It was something really basic. At the end of the day, I had meniscus surgery. 

“It definitely changed a lot for me. I became a little bit calmer. I changed a lot in my life and made some tough decisions, and I think I’m getting rewarded for it now.”

Linette was helped on her way by an erratic performance from Pliskova, whose 36 unforced errors including two consecutive double faults in the penultimate game. The Czech, who had won seven of the previous nine meetings between the pair but lost the two most recent, suggested Linette’s consistency had been a decisive factor.     

“I hit some really good serves, then she still like puts many balls back,” said Pliskova. “That’s the pressure where you want to go for more and then you miss. I think she really made it difficult for me, not missing many balls, not giving anything for free, any mistakes. I just didn’t play a great match.”

Sabalenka has yet to lose a set since she arrived in Australia, but she was forced to navigate a testing passage midway through the opener as Vekic recovered from an early break before threatening to edge ahead.

“There were a lot of tough moments,” said Sabalenka. “I just kept saying, ‘Just stay in the game, fight for it, don’t give her easy points, make her work for it.’

“That’s how I was able to get out from those situations.”

 The auspices are encouraging for Sabalenka as she contemplates a fourth tilt at a grand slam final, having previously been thwarted in the last four at Wimbledon and, twice, at the US Open. She has won both her previous matches against Linette, including an emphatic victory at the Tokyo Olympics last summer, but she will be taking nothing for granted.

“It’s going to be a great test for me, if I can actually keep myself calm,” said Sabalenka. “In the semi-finals before, I got there with up and downs. [That] didn’t help me at all. 

“So right now it’s going to be a real test for me, if I can keep myself calm like I was keeping myself calm during these past matches.”

The post Linette to face Sabalenka in Australian Open semis appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Good enough to defeat Ons Jabeur at the French Open last year, good enough to make the third round of all four majors and reach a career-high ranking of 33, her ability was never in doubt. Yet Linette, the Polish world No 45, was never quite able to take the next step, top-30 status eluding her as stubbornly as a place in the second week of a grand slam.

All that has changed at the Australian Open, where Linette pulled off a stunning 7-6 (7-3), 6-4 victory over Caroline Garcia, the fourth seed and WTA Finals champion, to claim a place in the quarter-finals. No one would have predicted she would be the last Pole standing, but defeats for her United Cup team-mates Iga Swiatek and Hubert Hurkacz have left the 30-year-old as the lone standard bearer for her country, and how she has earned it. 

“I’ve been in third rounds so many times that I knew I’m capable,” said Linette. “I think it was more frustrating than that I would wonder or worry about it.”

There was certainly plenty of frustration for Garcia, who led by a double break early in the opening set and later served for it. When the Frenchwoman is in full flight, her unflinching commitment to attack is thrilling to behold. But Garcia can also be her own worst enemy and, on a day when she sprayed 33 unforced errors, her refusal to entertain a Plan B was glaring.

“She played a great match, and obviously I made some mistakes, and that hurt,” said Garcia, who capped a resurgent summer last year by making her first grand slam semi-final at the US Open. 

“I need a little time. It’s a very fresh loss. It’s always hurting and always tough to go through.”

Take nothing away from Linette, though, who showed tremendous fortitude to absorb the early punishment meted out by Garcia and work her way back into the contest. The Pole is an outstanding athlete and a fine ball-striker, particularly off her preferred backhand wing, from which she produced some stunning winners. Yet it was her equilibrium in the face of Garcia’s aggressive, early returns and incessant net-rushing that set the pair apart down the home straight. 

As the Frenchwoman raged at her lack of consistency, swatting the court with her racket as her forehand flew long and her first serve stats dropped to a meagre 44%, Linette was a study in composure. It is an area she has been working hard on since last summer, and she has reaped the dividends in Australia, earning fine wins over Jil Teichmann and Lucia Bronzetti at the United Cup and beating a trio of seeds in Melbourne, where she has also accounted for Anett Kontaveit and Ekaterina Alexandrova.

“We worked a lot [on] my emotional management,” said Linette, who will Karolina Pliskova, a 6-0, 6-4 winner over China’s Shuai Zhang, in the last eight. “Dealing with losses, but not necessarily match losses, just [mid-match] losses, small mistakes here and there. I think I’ve never really deal with them very well. They carried over later on for next point, then another one. It was taking me just too long to get over them. 

“This approach of really trying to look [at things] a little bit differently, grow up a little bit emotionally, was a big thing.”

Another player who has been doing things differently is Aryna Sabalenka, the fifth seed, who remains unbeaten in 2023 after firing 32 winners as she came through 7-5, 6-2 against Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic. 

“I’m just trying to stay calm on court and just wait for the opportunities,” said Sabalenka.

The Belarusian will face Donna Vekic in the quarter-finals after the Croatian defeated the Czech teenager Linda Fruhvirtova 6-2, 1-6, 6-3.

The post Linette fells Garcia to maintain dream run appeared first on Love Game Tennis.